<title>Gar</title>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Runic_letter_gar.svg"><img src="../img/runes/gar.svg" alt="Gar rune" title="Gar rune"></a></p>
<h1>Gar</h1>

<p>Traditional meaning: Odin's spear</p>

<p>Meanings when upright:</p>

<ul>
	<li>stop asking</li>
	<li>you're not supposed to know</li>
	<li>wait and watch</li>
	<li>you must go forward on faith alone</li>
</ul>

<p>Meanings when inverted:</p>

<ul>
	<li>you need to know</li>
</ul>

<hr>

<p>There is not a known Norwegian or Anglo-Saxon rune poem for Gar.</p>

<p>A modern poem:</p>

<blockquote>
	<p>There used to be "forbidden questions"<br/>
	you would only answer with hesitation,<br/>
	would sometimes answer "no"<br/>
	just to throw<br/>
	a wrench in my anxiety's gears.</p>

	<p>Although<br/>
	I guess by now I should know<br/>
	that if you've loved me all these years,<br/>
	there's no reason you would stop now.<br/>
	Not after everything I've ever done<br/>
	or the atrocities I have yet to commit:<br/>
	your life is mine, you insist;<br/>
	I'm the only one you want to spend it with.</p>

	<p>I guess by now<br/>
	you've figured out<br/>
	that nervousness is my base nature,<br/>
	that while consciously I know,<br/>
	it hasn't pierced through all my layers.<br/>
	Hasn't come to reside<br/>
	in my left lung, straining for air,<br/>
	strung up with rope and left to die.</p>

	<p>It's said that Odin sacrificed<br/>
	himself to himself in this way,<br/>
	knowledge the thing that he sought.<br/>
	An alphabet to answer magic,<br/>
	guard rails for creative thought.</p>

	<p>Just as fated is Nidhogg<br/>
	to the roots of Yggdrasil forever gnaw,<br/>
	so I too lurk the underground of Yewiffe,<br/>
	stuck going in circles, unable to leave.<br/>
	This last rune standing at the end of time,<br/>
	a doorway out<br/>
	crossed out<br/>
	with two opposing lines.<br/>
	There's something in my past<br/>
	for which I am wracked with longing,<br/>
	but I can't find it<br/>
	and neither do I know what it is<br/>
	and going down is this ship<br/>
	and the blood<br/>
	in my lungs<br/>
	is pooling<br/>
	where the spear<br/>
	has pierced<br/>
	my side<br/>
	and in my own sorrow sans escape I am drowning.</p>

	<p>"I thought I told you-<br/>
	<i>I thought you knew</i>-<br/>
	that I'd never leave you behind."</p>
</blockquote>